Did you want to discuss/speculate about this instead? I'm moving this to literary discussions anyway.

Also, just to note -- this is not a book, it's a play, so I imagine the development will be very different. Lots of people seem to be expecting this to be a novelisation of the play, but it's a script.

Also, to kick off discussion, does anyone else feel all this new Harry Potter stuff is just a load of money-spinning fanfictiony-sounding ehhhh. I loooove Harry Potter, but every update I've heard about/from J.K Rowling in the last year or two has chipped away at my contented readery bubble, and I don't like it.

I would love her to move on from Harry Potter, because I find the constant influx of pointless new things annoying--especially when she retcons things for PC points--grating. Of course, she won't do that because Harry Potter is such a massive cash cow that when she makes even the slightest mention of something new it draws immense attention. If today she tweeted, "Draco should've been a brunette", every news and pop culture outlet would, at the least, dedicate a few paragraphs of insight into this remark. It's kind of amazing how little effort is required to market this series, on her part.

I'm interested to see what it's like. I'm the type of person who goes through fanfiction archives to read through those 'what happened next' stories, so I'll give it a go when the book version comes out.

I'm interested to see what it's like. I'm the type of person who goes through fanfiction archives to read through those 'what happened next' stories, so I'll give it a go when the book version comes out.

I will watch the play first Besides I remember watching the first Harry Potter movie before actually reading the book and then I got hooked reading the all the books first before watching it in the movies

I think the focus is off Harry on this one and moved to the child. It's time that we look at a new perspective of the classic wizardry books.
Just keep Harry on and off, while focussing mainly on new interesting characters with different storylines that somehow have mild connections to the one's that we've read all along in the series.

I wasn't going to buy this, originally, but I work at a book store and while I didn't work the midnight release, we were so busy during the release day itself that it might as well have been a midnight release. Seeing all these people (all adults, no children came to buy the script) get excited for the new Harry Potter reminded me that once upon a time I used to get really excited for these books... plus, it's a $40 book here, and it's 40% on release, on top of my staff discount, so I figured I'd go ahead and purchase it. My thoughts...

From a bookseller perspective, I hate this thing. You can tell a lot of people aren't buying it because it's a play. Like, you can literally watch them see it in the window, get excited, proclaim to their friends that they didn't know another Harry Potter book was out, run in to look at it, and then the look of confusion and disappointment as they realize it's a play. A lot of people walk out straight after (and one of the statistics stores track is conversion, which is how many people who enter the store actually buy something, so this is killing our conversion percentage). I've already had a handful of people return it because they bought it not knowing what it was, and didn't want to read a play. Dozens have people have asked "so when's the novel version coming out?" and try as I do to explain that this is a publication of the script of the London production so there probably won't be a novel (or, at least, one written by any of the writers here) people still have this hopeful look in their eye, and decide to wait to buy the book.

But I like scripts. I enjoy reading scripts, so while it was odd to get into, I was still able to get into it. I did not have high hopes for this--I'm not a fan of revisiting series' years later and making a point of destroying rose-tinted glasses (it's one of the reasons I will not read Go Set a Watchman, because I do not care about humanizing Atticus Finch).

Anyway, my thoughts can be best summed up with: It didn't ruin the series for me (though I was starting to worry when that trolley lady nonsense started). It has no where near the same effect on me that the books did, but I didn't expect it to. There were a lot of uncomfortable and awkward lines, pretty much everything Scorpius said seemed silly, but the rave reviews the performance is getting makes me think it's probably better in performance. There's one particular moment I can't tell if it's supposed to be played for laughs, or if it's just literally the dumbest thing I've ever seen written, it's when...

Spoiler:

They have the time-turner, and they're going to go back in time, and Scorpius suggests testing whether or not they can even get back when they travel back in time, saying they should go back an hour first so they don't get stuck. The response is literally "we don't have time for that." The person. Holding a time-travelling device. Says they don't have time for that.

One of the characters also felt extremely shoe-horned in, or at least the explanation of their existence, right at the end when...

Spoiler:

Delphi tells Voldemort (or, who she thinks is Voldemort) that she's a baby that Bellatrix Lestrange gave birth to right before the battle of Hogwarts... So other than the awful mental picture of Voldemort having sex, and the mental gymnastics of trying to see him as someone who could even, er, perform, that means Bellatrix Lestrange was pregnant for the majority of the seventh book. And like, really pregnant. According to the wiki, Delphi was born in March, but Bellatrix is torturing fools right in April. I mean, it just feels like an extremely contrived explanation for how Voldemort could have had a child we otherwise heard nothing about.

Otherwise I thought it was okay, while giving it the benefit of the doubt that scripts don't capture the same emotion that seeing the play performed does, or reading in a fleshed-out novel. There are quite a few climaxes throughout this script that I think, if seen or read in a novel, would have been really powerful moments... but in the pacing of a script don't hit home quite as hard.

Also, it still annoys me that Harry got to name all three children. Like, you'd think at the third one Ginny would have put her foot down. "You got to name the first two after your parents, Harry, but I have relatives I'd like to honour too."

From a bookseller perspective, I hate this thing. You can tell a lot of people aren't buying it because it's a play. Like, you can literally watch them see it in the window, get excited, proclaim to their friends that they didn't know another Harry Potter book was out, run in to look at it, and then the look of confusion and disappointment as they realize it's a play. A lot of people walk out straight after (and one of the statistics stores track is conversion, which is how many people who enter the store actually buy something, so this is killing our conversion percentage). I've already had a handful of people return it because they bought it not knowing what it was, and didn't want to read a play. Dozens have people have asked "so when's the novel version coming out?" and try as I do to explain that this is a publication of the script of the London production so there probably won't be a novel (or, at least, one written by any of the writers here) people still have this hopeful look in their eye, and decide to wait to buy the book.

This just seems . .. really dumb to me. This 'book' has been advertised as a script of the play from day one, and I've not actually met anyone in real life or online who didn't know that fact before buying it. That it's a script has been a huge factor in all of the pre-publiction media. It even says on the cover that it's a 'new play by JACK THORNE' so I have no sympathy for those silly people who are too lazy to read information readily there.

I personally hated Cursed Child, and not because it's a play. It has an overwhelmingly awful fanfiction-ness about it, all the way through. I have actually read better fanfiction, and fanfiction that uses some of the same plot ideas as parody (cue Very Potter Musical and the trolley witch). Most of the main characters are out-of-character, including past versions of the characters we know, it's awfully written, has a terribly contrived plot with a lot of rather big plot holes in it, features some cringey cameos of people we didn't need to see again while also forgetting others even exist (Hugo? Teddy? Neville? No? Okay.), it defies the rules of the magic we already know, recycles emotion (by that I mean, the most emotional scenes were ones we've seen in some form/have imagined before), and forces another 'all was well' ending, when no, all was not well at all.

One of the characters also felt extremely shoe-horned in, or at least the explanation of their existence, right at the end when...

Spoiler:

Delphi tells Voldemort (or, who she thinks is Voldemort) that she's a baby that Bellatrix Lestrange gave birth to right before the battle of Hogwarts... So other than the awful mental picture of Voldemort having sex, and the mental gymnastics of trying to see him as someone who could even, er, perform, that means Bellatrix Lestrange was pregnant for the majority of the seventh book. And like, really pregnant. According to the wiki, Delphi was born in March, but Bellatrix is torturing fools right in April. I mean, it just feels like an extremely contrived explanation for how Voldemort could have had a child we otherwise heard nothing about.

Oh man, I was already done with trying to take this seriously before this came up, but lolo. It's so unrealistic to any of the characters involved, and it literally just gives Thorne a reason to not give that character any real depth of their own, because who needs their own depth

Spoiler:

if their parents are the two most crazy and evil people in the series? I also actually hate the idea that evil people have evil children, as if being 'evil' is something inheritable like that and not a product of your awful upbringing and messed-up psychology. For all I know, Delphi could be as messed up as they are, but we don't actually know anything much about her life prior to her appearance. Also, most of tumblr has come up with massive lists of reasons why this insert into the timeline just can't work. For one, Draco at least would have known Bellatrix had a baby because he was living at Malfoy Mnaor for all the time she was.

Also, it still annoys me that Harry got to name all three children. Like, you'd think at the third one Ginny would have put her foot down. "You got to name the first two after your parents, Harry, but I have relatives I'd like to honour too."